I have had a Citibank card for at least five years carrying a zero balance for about three of those years. Over the past several months I received quite a few offers for low interest rates of 5.9% down to 1.9% and when I finally received and offer for 0% for a balance transfer until paid off, I thought ... OK, I'll bite. So, about 30 days ago I reactivated my card with a $5000.00 transfer at the 0% rate until paid off.

I keep every statement stub I mail for at least a year and file each according to company. I also write dates of checks and check numbers on those stubs. I absolutely received no statement for this past month. I've gone through all of my files and check stubs and received none and I sure was not going to make a payment with no statement after such a large transfer.

Suddenly I start receiving calls that my payment is late and, to add insult to injury, when the late charge was added to the account, the account was thrown over the credit limit. So now, not only do I owe a $35.00 late fee, I owe an over limit charge of $35.00. I was told that I now owe a payment of $260.00 to bring me up to date and my interest rate has zoomed from 0% to 28%. My husband and I have had excellent credit for over forty years and I won't say that we have never made a late payment on anything because things happen beyond anyone's control sometime. But we have worked very hard to keep a good credit rating. I phoned in again and wanted to make a payment by phone and found out there would be a $14.00 charge for payments received by phone and no charge if made on their website. I hate doing that, but though I would take the chance in order to save another late fee. On line I am informed that there is a $5.00 fee for making payments on line.

If I ever get my cards paid off, I will never use ANY credit cards again. How I will purchase plane tickets or pay for motels, I don't know. Guess we will stay home!

The above practice is a real gimmick to make more money for the card company and this is the third time something similar has happened to our family. The worst experience also concerned a balance transfer. I transferred a balance from my daughter's account and since it showed up on my statement, I assumed everything was all right. About two months later my daughter received a statement saying she stilled owed $.24 of the original charges that the transfer had not covered (yes twenty-four cents) and now interest a two months of late charges brought the grand total to almost $75.00 and if she didn't pay it, they would report it to a credit card collection company. Talk about a racket!

Linda Simmons, lsimns45@yahoo.com